Last updated: September 3, 2026
Scope
SportsPersia is read from Iran, from the Iranian diaspora in Europe and North America, and from the wider region, so several privacy regimes apply at once. This policy covers sportspersia.com only, not sites you reach through a link from here.
The operator of sportspersia.com is the controller under the General Data Protection Regulation and the UK GDPR. All privacy correspondence: [email protected].
What We Collect
Things you send us directly
Email to our published addresses reaches us with your address, the name you sign with, and the contents. We keep it to reply and to hold a record if a correction is disputed afterwards. Nobody who writes to us is added to any list.
Comments are open under our articles. Leaving one stores the name and email you type, the comment, your IP address and your user agent. The name and comment are published; the email and IP address are not.
Things your browser tells us
Our web server keeps an access log, as all web servers do: IP address, timestamp, requested and referring address, response code, and the user agent identifying your browser and operating system. That log is all this site records about you on its own.
There is no analytics layer above it. No Google Analytics, no Tag Manager, no measurement script of ours, no heat map, no session recording. Nothing here records scroll depth, time on page, clicks or window size, and no visit identifier of ours is attached to your reading. What we know about traffic is that log, read in aggregate.
What we do not collect
No payment information, because we sell nothing to readers. No precise satellite location. No special category data under the GDPR and no sensitive personal information under California law: we neither collect nor ask partners to infer data about health, belief, political opinion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, biometrics or union membership.
Cookies and Similar Technologies
We and our advertising partners use cookies, local storage and pixels. The only ones we set are the cookie recording your consent choice and technical cache cookies holding no personal data; the rest are the partners’. Categories, purposes, lifetimes and controls are in the Cookie Policy. Where consent is legally required, nothing outside the strictly necessary category runs before you give it.
Advertising: How the Ads on This Page Got Here
Reading SportsPersia costs nothing because advertising pays for it. The advertisements are not booked in advance and are not chosen by us: when your browser opens a page, an automated auction runs and the highest bid fills the slot.
For the auction to happen, information about the request leaves this site: your IP address and the approximate location it implies; your user agent, device type, operating system, screen size and browser language; the address of the page you are reading and sometimes the page you came from; advertising identifiers previously stored by those partners; signals about whether an advertisement rendered, was visible on screen, or was clicked; and, in the EEA and the United Kingdom, the consent signal you gave or refused.
The advertising here is run by PubGalaxy, which manages the stack for us and brings in the buyers. Behind it, supply-side platforms and exchanges put our inventory up for bid, demand-side platforms bid for advertisers, ad servers deliver and count the creative, and verification vendors check for fraud and viewability. Their code runs in your browser and collects what it needs directly. They act as controllers in their own right for it, under their own purposes, retention periods and privacy policies.
Where a partner uses that data to profile your interests and target advertising to you on other websites, California law calls it sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising, and that state’s wide definition of a sale can apply too. You can stop it; see Your California Rights.
Readers in the EEA and the United Kingdom see a consent notice before any of this runs, served by a consent management platform built to the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework, version 2.3. It records your answer purpose by purpose, passes the resulting consent string to the participating companies, and can be reopened at any time to change or withdraw it. Declining does not remove advertising; it switches it to contextual selection, based on the subject of the article and a coarse location rather than a history of your browsing.
Why We Process It, and the Lawful Basis
- Delivering the site — serving pages, caching, load balancing. Legitimate interests.
- Keeping it standing — rate limiting, blocking scrapers and automated attacks, identifying invalid advertising traffic. Legitimate interests, and legal obligation where one applies.
- Understanding readership — reading the server log in aggregate to decide what to cover. Legitimate interests.
- Replying to you — handling email and moderating comments. Legitimate interests, or steps taken at your request.
- Advertising — contextual advertising rests on legitimate interests; personalized advertising rests on your consent in the EEA and the UK, and in the United States operates subject to the opt-out below.
- Meeting legal duties — responding to valid legal process and keeping records the law requires. Legal obligation.
Each legitimate interest has been weighed against your rights. You may object at any time.
Who Receives Data
- Hosting and content delivery providers that store and serve the site.
- Security providers that filter malicious traffic.
- PubGalaxy and the advertising partners it brings in, in the roles described above.
- Professional advisers, under confidentiality.
- Public authorities, where legally obliged to answer a valid request.
- A successor operator, if the site were transferred; this policy would apply until you were told otherwise.
We do not exchange readers’ personal information for money.
Transfers Across Borders
Our advertising partners operate worldwide, so this data is processed in countries other than the one you read from, including the United States. Transfers of EEA and United Kingdom readers’ data outside those areas rely on an adequacy decision where one exists, and otherwise on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum. Ask and we will tell you which applies.
How Long We Keep It
- Server access logs: deleted within 30 days, leaving only aggregate page counts that identify nobody. Nothing else is recorded, so nothing else is kept.
- Comments: as long as the article stays published, unless you ask for removal.
- Email: up to 24 months from the last message.
- Consent and opt-out records: long enough to prove we honored your choice, generally 24 months.
- Advertising cookies: controlled by the partner that set them, with lifetimes in the Cookie Policy.
Security
The site is served over encrypted connections, and administrative access is restricted and logged. No system is perfectly secure. Where a breach triggers a notification duty we notify the competent supervisory authority and affected readers as the law requires.
Your Rights in the EEA and the United Kingdom
- Access — a copy of the personal data we hold and an explanation of its use.
- Rectification — correction of inaccurate or incomplete data.
- Erasure — deletion where a ground in Article 17 applies.
- Restriction — freezing processing while a dispute over accuracy or lawfulness is resolved.
- Portability — data you provided, in machine-readable form.
- Objection — to processing based on legitimate interests, and at any time to direct marketing, which includes personalized advertising.
- Withdrawal of consent — at any time, without affecting what was lawful before.
- Complaint — to your national data protection authority, or the Information Commissioner’s Office in the United Kingdom.
We answer within one month, and will say if a complex request needs the two-month extension the GDPR allows. There is no charge unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive. Because we hold almost nothing that identifies readers by name, an access request usually depends on you supplying the cookie values that let us find anything.
Your California Rights
The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, gives California residents the rights below, with the disclosures that accompany them.
Categories involved
- Identifiers — IP address, cookie and device identifiers, and your email address if you write to us.
- Internet or other electronic network activity — pages requested, referring pages and the browser and device detail in the user agent; plus whatever the advertising partners’ own code observes in your browser.
- Coarse geolocation — country, region and sometimes city, inferred from the IP address. Never precise geolocation.
- Inferences — interest categories derived by advertising partners and used to select advertising.
Sources are you directly and your browser automatically. These categories serve the purposes set out above, are disclosed for business purposes to hosting and security providers under contracts limiting their use, and are disclosed to advertising partners for delivering and measuring advertising. We collect no sensitive personal information as the CPRA defines it, so the right to limit its use has nothing here to operate on.
Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
Because advertising partners may use identifiers and activity data to target advertising to you on other websites, that disclosure counts as a sale or a share under California law. You can stop it in any of these ways:
- Turn on Global Privacy Control in a browser or extension that supports it. We treat that signal as a valid opt-out automatically, with no email required.
- Email [email protected] with DO NOT SELL OR SHARE in the subject line.
- Reopen the consent panel on this site and record your choice there; it applies to the advertising technologies on this domain.
- Use the industry opt-out tools listed in the Cookie Policy, which cover many advertising companies at once.
An opt-out stored as a browser signal or cookie is specific to that browser and device, so set it again after clearing cookies or switching devices.
The other California rights
- Right to know the categories and specific pieces of personal information collected, their sources, purposes and recipients.
- Right to delete, subject to the exceptions the statute allows.
- Right to correct inaccurate personal information.
- Right to non-retaliation. Exercising a right will not restrict content or change your experience of the site.
An authorized agent may act for you with written permission and proof of identity. We verify requests against the identifiers you supply, and say plainly where verification is impossible.
Other United States Privacy Laws
Residents of Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, Oregon, Delaware, New Jersey and other states with comprehensive privacy statutes have broadly similar rights: to confirm and access, correct, delete, obtain a portable copy, and opt out of targeted advertising, sale and certain profiling. Use the same address. Where the statute gives a right to appeal a refusal, our response explains the route.
Readers Elsewhere
This site is read from countries whose laws differ from those named above. If your law gives you a right we have not listed, write to us anyway, rather than argue about which statute applies.
Children
SportsPersia is written for a general adult audience. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, and do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided information here, write to us and it will be deleted.
Automated Signals We Honor
We honor Global Privacy Control as an opt-out of sale, sharing and targeted advertising. The older Do Not Track header never acquired an agreed meaning; use GPC instead.
Updates to This Policy
We revise this policy when our practices, our partners or the law change. The date at the top identifies the current version, and material changes are highlighted on this page. Where the law requires consent for something new, we ask again rather than assume.
Contact and Complaints
Privacy correspondence: [email protected]. Editorial matters: [email protected]. If our answer does not satisfy you, readers in the EEA may complain to their national supervisory authority, readers in the United Kingdom to the Information Commissioner’s Office, and California residents the California Privacy Protection Agency.